As I’ve written before about Reza Aslan, one of the most unfortunate aspects of the politically correct straitjacket that binds contemporary public discourse is that deceitful mediocrities and intellectual flotsam and jetsam who aren’t capable of independent thought or of defending their own positions except with lies and scorn, are lauded and lionized by the clueless and compromised elites, solely because they parrot currently fashionable opinions.
This applies in spades to Omid Safi, a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Safi published a hot, steaming pile of Islamic dawah in the Huffington Post yesterday -- does the HuffPo publish wit and wisdom from Jewish or Christian apologists singing the glories of their religions? In it, he writes this:
I couldn’t help but smile as I recalled Omid’s self-important, pompous, arrogant mien in our exchange a few years back -- and his libelous claim about me: “He is a hateful man, who has personally threatened me and my family with death. These are not people who are interested in serious scholarly debate.”
The irony is thick: when I invited him to debate, he responded with scorn. Then he falsely claimed I had threatened him with death while saying that I was “a hateful man.” I beg to differ, Omid: what is hateful is falsely claiming that someone has committed a felony and refusing to retract when challenged.
Following the manners of Satan, eh, Omid?
Anyway, Safi is just another example of the many odious mediocrities who are accorded respect and given university positions solely because they hold the accepted politically correct opinions, not because they have any intellectual capabilities or, in Safi’s case, any regard for ethics or honesty whatsoever.
